Affixation in modern english — страница 2

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infixes, and according to their function and meaning, into derivational and functional affixes, the latter also called endings or outer formatives. When a derivational or functional affix is stripped from the word, what remains is a stem (or a stem base). The stem expresses the lexical and the part of speech meaning.1 For the word hearty and for the paradigm heart (Sing.) – hearts (Pl.)2 the stem may be represented as heart– This stem is a single morpheme, it contains nothing but the root, so it is a simple stem. It is also a free stem because it is homonymous to the word heart. A stem may also be defined as the part of the word that remains unchanged throughout its paradigm. The stem of the paradigm hearty – heartier – (the) heartiest is hearty– It is a free stem, but

as it consists of a root morpheme and an affix, it is not simple but derived. Thus, a stem containing one or more affixes is a derived stem. If after deducing the affix the remaining stem is not homonymous to a separate word of the same root, we call it a bound stem. Thus, in the word cordial 'proceeding as if from the heart', the adjective-forming suffix can be separated on the analogy with such words as bronchia/, radial, social. The remaining stem, however, cannot form a separate' word by itself: it is bound. In cordially and cordiality, on the other hand, the stems are free. Bound stems are especially characteristic of loan words. The point may be illustrated by the following French borrowings: arrogance, charity, courage, coward, distort, involve, notion, legible and

tolerable, to give but a few.3 After the suffixes of these words are taken away the remaining elements are: arrog-, char-, cour-, cow-, – tort, – voIve, nat-, leg-, toler-, which do not coincide with any semantically related independent words. Roots-are main morphemic vehicles of a given idea in a given language at a given stage of its development. A root may be also regarded as the ultimate constituent element which remains after the removal of all functional and derivational affixes and does not admit any further analysis. It is the common element of words within a word-family. Thus, – heart – is the common root of the following series of words: heart, hearten, dishearten, heartily, heartless, hearty, heartiness, sweetheart, heart-broken, kind-hearted,

whole-heartedly, etc. In some of these, as, for example, in hearten, there is only one root; in others the root – heart is combined with some other root, thus forming a compound like sweetheart. It will at once be noticed that the root in English is very often homonymous with the word. This fact is of fundamental importance as it is one of the most specific features of the English language arising from its general grammatical system on the one hand, and from its phonemic system on the other. The influence of the analytical structure of the language is obvious. The second point, however, calls for some explanation. Actually the usual phonemic shape most favoured in English is one single stressed syllable: bear, find, jump, land, man, sing, etc. This does not give much space for

a second morpheme to add classifying Lexico-grammatical meaning to the lexical meaning already present in the root-stem, so the Lexico-grammatical meaning must be signaled by distribution. In the phrases a morning's drive, a morning's ride, a morning's walk the words drive, ride and walk receive the Lexico-grammatical meaning of. a noun not due to the structure of their stems, but because they are preceded by a noun in the Possessive case. An English word does not necessarily contain formatives indicating to what part of speech it belongs. This holds true even with respect to inflexible parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives. Not all roots are free forms, but productive roots, i.e. roots capable of producing new words, usually are. The semantic realization of an English

word is therefore very specific. Its dependence on distribution is further enhanced by the widespread occurrence of homonymy both among root morphemes and affixes. Note how many words in the following statement might be ambiguous if taken in isolation: A change of work is as good as a rest. The above treatment of the root is purely synchronic, as we have taken into consideration only the facts of present-day English. But the same problem of the morpheme serving as the main signal of a given lexical meaning is studied in etymology, i.e. in that branch of linguistics which deals with the origin and development of words tracing them back to their earliest determinable source. When approached thus historically or diachronically the word heart will be classified as Common Germanic.